Visuals of fire are bedrock of lawsuits, attorneys say

Attorneys who sued or are about to bring claims against Southern California Edison over the Eaton Canyon fire say their actions will likely follow a familiar arc, even if the scope is larger than wildfires that came before it.

Wildfire litigation against utilities tends to follow an established pattern. Plaintiffs typically file claims of negligence, inverse condemnation, trespass and nuisance, and defendants say they were not responsible for the disaster.

"We will be focusing on the cause of the fire and use that to support a motion for inverse condemnation," Wisner Baum partner Ari S. Friedman said on Thursday. "If we show Edison started the fire, that it was their equipment, then they are liable for the entirety of economic property damage. Going to trial won't help."

Wisner Baum is preparing to sue Edison over the fire.

Robertson & Associates LLP is one of a dozen or so firms that already sued Southern California Edison this week. The company has a well-worn playbook for how to handle wildfire cases, Alexander "Trey" Robertson IV said.

Robertson was a co-lead counsel for the 10,000 individual plaintiffs in the Woolsey Fire litigation and served on the Plaintiffs' Executive Committee in The Southern California Fire Cases, JCCP4965, where he represents approximately 700 claimed victims of the 2017 Thomas Fire and Montecito Debris Flow.

"There is a tremendous volume of eyewitness [photo and video] that shows the origin at the base of the Edison transmission tower. The focus now is to determine the sequence of ignition," Robertson said.

Edison's counsel, Hueston Hennigan LLP, did not respond to a request for an interview. No investigation of the fire's cause has been completed.

Edison's website states, "One critical tool we use to prevent wildfires is the Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS), in which we may temporarily shut off power to your neighborhood during dangerous weather conditions to prevent our electric system from becoming a source of ignition. These safety shutoffs are a measure of last resort for keeping you and your community safe.

"We base PSPS decisions on data gathered from fire scientists and meteorologists forecasting dangerous wildfire conditions, and on real-time information from our crews in the field. We understand that a PSPS event can create hardships for affected customers, and the decision to shut off power is never taken lightly."

The utility's CEO, Steven Powell, was quoted by the Los Angeles Times as saying that the winds in Eaton Canyon were not strong enough to warrant shutting off the high voltage transmission line that is being investigated as a possible cause of the fire that destroyed large tracts of Altadena.

"We're going to have to unpack that once the fires end, depending on what's left after the fire," Friedman said in reaction.

"When a corporation comes up with its own guidelines, we have to look at the process by which they are made," Friedman said. "This idea that 'we created a policy' and even if it was true, that threshold was insufficient from the videos and photos."

Friedman was referring to dramatic photos and videos that went viral after the Eaton Canyon fire ignited in the evening of Jan. 7. Palm trees could be seen bowed from the heavy winds with glowing embers flying everywhere. At least one video showed sparks near the base of a transmission tower. Those images will "undoubtedly" be part of the litigation, he said.

Longtime tort class action litigator Mary E. Alexander concurred, saying those visuals were "very damning and very useful" in determining the precise location where she seeks to prove the conflagration started. Referring to the fire on Maui that destroyed the town of Lahaina, Alexander said the plaintiffs' attorneys had to prove which pole and which line fell, and which connections were corroded.

Alexander said her firm - Mary Alexander & Associates PC, planned to sue Edison as well. "The numbers are going to be astronomical. It's a huge catastrophe. They knew far ahead that there was going to be wind. They should have shut off the power," she said.